The formula checks the position number of the cell generated by the base formula and sees if it is less than or equal to the number of values in each category in column A. It then returns the value of the category in each cell.

Because I wanted to put symbols in the cell like these examples.

Talking Heads waffle chartBombs waffle chart

I took that monster formula and made it into a named formula.

This made building the conditional formatting rules much easier to do(simply because the conditional formatting dialog is so cramped).

Lastly, I built a series of conditional formatting rules to change the background colour of the cell based on the value returned by the formula. For the waffles using symbols, the rule formats the colour of the font, instead of the background.

A couple of additional pointers

To create a perfect grid, switch the view in Excel to Page Layout View. Page Layout View uses the same measurement scale for both row height and column width. Set your measurements here.

For the symbol waffles, use the File> Options>Advanced> Display Options for this worksheetand turn off the display of gridlines. That way when you copy the waffle, the gridlines will be invisible.

I’m often asked my opinion about Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint. My answer – meh.

I can’t even get worked up enough about it to dislike it. Except now, after having seen a number of Prezi presentations I do have a Pavlovian nausea response to Prezi’s default swooping motion animations.

From my point of view; watching a naive user (my son) using Prezi for the first time really exposes all its’ faults. The intense focus on the visual. There is apparently no way of storyboarding a presentation in a text only view. This makes presentations that tend to not have logical flow. It is also difficult repurpose content from Prezi. At least without moving to the paid subscription model.

And while Prezi does have attractive templates, it squanders its’ most obvious asset – motion transitions; by not guiding users on how to use them effectively. Its’ other obvious positive features, shared collaboration and its online workspace/storage are also available in other products like Google Slides.

I might look to Prezi for visual inspiration, but if I had real work to do I’d chose a different presentation package.

Simple or Complicated?

Simple or complicated? It’s been my observation that anyone can make a subject sound complicated – but it takes real understanding of a topic to simplify it in a way that is meaningful.

This is why, when I saw this sample slide below from designer Julie Terberg, I sat up and paid attention. Here is a wonderful example of a chart that is simple in a beautiful and useful way. Immediately, you can see that an audience would find this chart easy to read and understand

Julie Terberg’s Button Bar Chart from her #SlideADayProject project

I paid even more attention when I saw the way that Neil Malek put together an Excel version of the chart. Neil introduces a clever technique using shapes in data labels. Here is the YouTube video:

Unfortunately, Neil’s clever technique is only available in Office 2016. I wanted to build the chart in Office 2010, for the benefit of my clients still using 2010.

Button Bar Chart Slide, in PowerPoint 2010

I think that in the end, I succeeded. If you are interested in building this chart, and like me you are restricted to Office 2010, then I have a few pointers for you.

Button Bar Chart Pointers

Data Labels in 2010 can not use shapes. Instead, I tweaked the Shadow setting for the label, by setting the colour to match the fill on the label and the size to 150%. I left all other settings to zero. Shaping the label this way means that you can never achieve the circle that Julie used in her example. Instead, the best you can do is a lozenge shape. You can modify this when you change the font size in the label.

But once you’ve used the Shadow to enlarge your button, you can’t use it to shadow the data label. I solved this problem with an old fashioned solution. I made two charts (a 2016 and a 2017 chart). The two charts are grouped together. Each chart has a data label for the year and a data label for the shadow. In the example below those labels are using the 1 values. The column labelled 2016 value is the length of the bar.

Button Bar Chart Data layout

The Shadow column must proceed the 2016 column or your shadow will wind up on top of the 2016 label. Also format your labels in that order as well, or the shadow will temporarily be on top of the 2016 label.

Format your shadow and label to the same font size.

The Chart Element selector on the Format Tab of the Chart Tools ribbon is your friend. Its’ really the only reasonable way to select the shadow data labels once they are under the visible label.

Link the label text to the cell in in Excel by using the formula bar and typing in the linking formula to the cell. This allows you to update the chart, by changing the text in the cell. A bit finicky to set up; but it will save a ton of time in the long run.

The best way to take this chart into PowerPoint is by copying/pasting the chart – as an image. Which means that you’ll need to presize the chart in Excel, so that text is not distorted by resizing once it is pasted into PowerPoint. Again, its a bit finicky – but worth it.

In PowerPoint, I created a layout, with text placeholders on the left and bottom of the slide.

Layout has text placeholders on left and bottom of slide

All in all, a pretty reasonable version of Julie’s stellar design.

If you want to follow Julie Terberg and Neil Malek on Twitter, you’ll find them here.

Each bag has is covered in the entire alphabet of shortcut key combinations (around 55) for Microsoft Word. You can test your knowledge! Some of my favorite Word shortcuts are on the attached card. Plus, I’ve tucked in a little bit of WebGenii swag into the bag as well.

The tricky part of designing this bag is that there areso manykeyboard shortcuts for Word. So, I decided to limit myself to only the letter shortcuts.

For the list of my favorite shortcuts on the card I made sure only to pick my non-letter favorites. Maybe you’ll find a new favorite here too!

Close up of Quiz & Tip card

Clearly, keeping our box loving friend out of the boxes was an incentive to quick work; because the bags have all been stuffed and prepared for drop-off at the Redcliff Youth Centre.